Love is wiser than wisdom. - Umberto Eco

"Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text."

But sometimes Belbo, when he became really angry, lost his composure. Since loss of composure was the one thing he could not tolerate in others, his own was wholly internal — and regional. He would purse his lips, raise his eyes, then look down, tilt his head to the left, and say in a soft voice: “Ma gavte la nata.” For anyone who didn’t know that Piedmontese expression, he would occasionally explain: “Ma gavte la nata. Take out the cork.” You say it to one who is full of himself, the idea being that what causes him to swell and strut is the pressure of a cork stuck in his behind. Remove it, and phsssssh, he returns to the human condition.

The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis.